When there is a large fundraising goal to achieve,
it can be easy to put all focus into obtaining large donations. While these
large contributions are crucial to reaching your goal, smaller-scale donations
deserve just as much focus. In order to get these donations, people need to be
aware of the fundraiser and its purpose. The following tips will help your
fundraiser gain the awareness it needs to be successful.
Partner with a
well-known business
Partner your nonprofit with a well-known local
business that will offer discounts, with the proceeds supporting your cause.
These services could be performed either at a one-day event or long term with
coupons or discounts towards specific services or products. This benefits the
business with more foot traffic, and your nonprofit with greater awareness and
donations.
Partnering with the local business should not stop
with the event or discounts. Partner with their social media team to really
pool your resources. Put your heads together to create new content to raise
awareness and promote the event. Make sure to really interact with each other
on different social media platforms. Share, Like, Comment and Retweet posts
related to the event. Sharing an audience with your business partner allows for
a much greater reach and increases potential for customer interaction.
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| Salon CTI employees and Salon Professional Academy students pose before the Cut-A-Thon. Image Credit: on.fb.me/1ndb3Vk |
For example, HuTerra recently partnered with SalonCTI and Salon Professionals Academy - Appleton for a Cut-A-Thon. The Cut-A-Thon
offered haircuts at a discounted rate of $15, with the proceeds being donated
to Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. Collaborating with both the salon
and the academy on Facebook and Twitter through tagging the companies in posts
and sharing, liking, and retweeting content more than doubled our audience
reach and customer interaction.
Develop a specific
social media campaign
Collaborating with another company’s social media
team is great for the cause and the fundraiser. A higher reach equals far more
awareness to the cause. However, without an action plan, this newly gained
audience is irrelevant. The first thing to decide is the purpose for the social
media push. Are you trying to drive traffic to an event? Are you looking to develop
awareness for your cause? Do you want to increase site traffic? Or are you
trying to solicit higher donations for your fundraiser?
You will also want to develop unique, shareable and
easy to remember content to get recognition. Create relevant hashtags and post
pictures to get your audience interested. Reach out to anyone with a large
following to share your content or use your hashtag. Good ideas for this are
local celebrities and public figures such as radio or TV hosts, athletes and/or
their spouses, politicians and big business owners.
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| Salon and Academy owner Josif Wittnik promoting the Cut-A-Thon with his #OrangeThumbie |
In a joint effort with the Cut-A-Thon, we also
launched the #OrangeThumbie social media campaign.We challenged people to
paint their thumb nail orange (the color for hunger awareness), upload a “thumbie,”
a selfie showing off their painted nail, with the hashtag #OrangeThumbie and
encouraged them to donate to the Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin fundraiser.
The campaign started with HuTerra employees and the owner of Salon CTI. The
salon employees and academy’s students posted their “thumbies” to their pages as
an event kick-off and our team also had a connection with a local news anchor who joined
in on the thumbie fun as traction started growing.
What kind of awareness have you raised for your
cause through partnering with a local business or through a large social media
campaign? Share your experience below in the comments!
